I appreciate George Friedman for his geopolitical know-how and his analysis about current and past political events. When it comes to future forecast some of his predictions seem very far fetched, science fiction like. In 'Star Wars' inspired chapters, the author describes epic battles between America, Japan and Turkey(sic!), occuring in the outer space and with rocket attacks launched from the Moon, not very far ahead from today, in less than fifty years. On the other hand, the author doesn't consider global issues such as climate change, famine and world poverty important enough for the next century to be discussed in this book.

This book is a solid analysis of new Russia under Putin and hopefully a wake up call for Western world citizens about the danger of nurturing cosy relations with a petro-dictator with imperialist ambitions and growing military capabilities.